Page 33 - Art of the Ming and Qing Dynasty by Johnathan Hay

displacement of the yimin, the "left-over subject" or "remnant", who defined his identity in

terms of the Ming, while living under the Qing. The Huizhou painter Hongren (1610-64), one
of many such artists who took Buddhist orders, depicted the wilderness through the cold
sensuality of Ni Zan's ascetic style, which had originally been popular in Huizhou as a sign
of literati sophistication but now was evocative of an earlier period of foreign occupation
(527). On this austere basis he turned the mountains and pines of nearby Mt. Huang into

emblems of national identity, defining a barren but protective world of refuge. The Huizhou
area harbored many loyalists, from whom came a whole school of wilderness painting of
which Hongren was the leading light.

Another rallying point for yimin painters was Nanjing, site of the former Ming palace
and the tomb of the Ming founder. Among the numerous painters who found a home in and
around the temples of its southern suburbs was the monk Kuncan (1612-ca.74), a close friend
of Cheng Zhengkui who lived at Bao’en Temple in the shadow of Yongle's "Porcelain
Pagoda". A devoted and learned Buddhist (unlike Hongren), Kuncan created some of the

most distinctive and powerful images of the wilderness to emerge from this Nanjing world.
As it happens, a number of these depict Mt. Huang, which he visited in 1659-60 (528). The
contrast between these tangled, vibrant landscapes and Hongren's lucid emblems could not be

greater. What seems at first sight to be a monumental mountainscape turns out to be devoid
of monumentality. Meandering paths divest the mountain image of hierarchical power, while
slightly oversize trees and figures deny it its proper scale: the mountain, traditional symbol of
the Emperor and the state, is here recuperated for a private community of survivors in the
wilderness. In the 1670s, a second Nanjing painter, Gong Xian (1619-89), created frankly

disturbing images of social and psychological dislocation (530). His dark landscapes promise
a coherence which becomes more and more doubtful as one looks. Paths which should lead
from and to a given point do not; seemingly straightforward compositions turn out to impose

different and contradictory viewpoints. The sky -- Heaven, in Chinese -- is never shown, and
the only human presence is hinted at by the sometimes face-like structures of the seemingly
empty houses.

MID- KANGXI TO YONGZHENG (1680-1735)

Reconstruction and Prosperity. After the final suppression of the Rebellion of the
Three Feudatories in 1681, the new dynasty could no longer be denied, and in the course of

the 1680s the court took the initiative. It was now, with the Kangxi emperor firmly in control
of government, that a coherent policy on court art was developed. Unlike the early Ming
rulers, the Kangxi and Yongzheng emperors did not seek to restrict the circulation of